Wireless network service providers often deploy and support multiple technology layers within service areas. Commonly, it is incorrectly assumed that newest radio technology is always best suited to serve most all or all new and legacy voice and data services on multi-technology capable mobile devices. While such an assumption may be accurate near middle to end of a radio network technology life-cycle, it rarely is accurate at the beginning of a radio technology layer deployment. Various aspects of an initial radio technology mitigate adequate service to most all or all new and legacy services, as the following examples reveal it. (i) Initial new-technology installations may lack support for legacy capabilities. (ii) Initial new-technology deployments may be incomplete and prone to faulty operation, and may cover substantially less than the entire service area. (iii) Initial new-technology capacity may lag mobile device growth and adoption; especially in cases where new wireless devices dominate sales growth as a result of legacy devices being perceived as démodé and relatively unattractive, particularly to early adopters.
From the perspective of a wireless service provider, commercial factors also affect deployment and adoption of new radio technologies, which can serve novel multi-technology devices. Uncontrollable legacy technology traffic de-growth may have substantial financial implications, and lead to business strategy changes to preserve market share, due to accelerated depreciation and writeoff of legacy equipment. To avert or control such risks, wireless network service providers often delay new radio technology launch until a commercial transition is ensured. The latter can result in additional radio technology deployment delays and costs that could be mitigated through better control of device behavior in the multi-technology wireless environments.
From the subscriber perspective, adoption and utilization of new radio technologies is not always correlated with acquisition of multi-technology mobile devices that support new radio technologies. Subscribers with new multi-technology devices may or may not require, purchase, or benefit from services delivered through new radio network technology.
With respect to wireless devices, multi-technology mobile devices typically provide limited, if any, capabilities for customizable dynamic radio network selection. Generally, multi-technology devices posses fixed radio technology preference settings, or such settings can be adjusted on a per-operator basis, which narrows capabilities for radio network selection on a per device or per service basis. In addition, novel mobile devices are generally configured to preferentially exploit a radio network based on novel radio technology, which can lead to inefficient service provision since a novel radio technology is not necessarily best suited for a served customer or service. Moreover, in multi-technology mobile devices that support radio technology selection there is an increasing reliance upon wireless network control of and signaling to the mobile device, which can increase delays, processor load and ultimately degrade wireless network capacity. Furthermore, mobile devices that can utilize multiple technologies typically display an in-use radio technology only, which can fail to provide subscribers a rich representation of a wireless environment or service area in which the mobile device operates.